REGION: State ends mammogram subsidy for some

Southwest County agencies decry decision

The state's decision essentially triples the number of women who
will need the group's help, she said. Now it must ax its
younger-than-40 program and weigh its services to all women on a
"case-by-case basis," she said.

"We'll provide services to as many women as we can," Goodnough
said. "It's going to be a tough call. We will potentially have to
say no to someone if we don't have the funding for them. It's just
a huge, huge problem."

In making the changes in coverage, the state's public health
department linked its decision to California's budget woes.

Officials said the cuts were needed because of a projected
budget shortfall for the California Department of Public Health,
and from declining revenue from tobacco taxes. It did not say how
much money it expected to save.

The government panel of doctors and scientists concluded that
getting screened for breast cancer so early and so often leads to
too many false alarms and unneeded biopsies without substantially
improving women's odds of survival.

But the benefits in finding cancers when they are more easily
treatable outweigh the drawbacks, health officials say.

Barbara Mannino, chief executive officer of the Vista Community
Clinic in San Diego County, said she thinks little money would be
saved by the state, because all the equipment and staff to provide
mammograms is already in place.

Meanwhile, the policy puts lives at risk, she said.

"I bet you everybody knows a woman who was diagnosed in her 40s,
and her life was saved by a mammogram, or lost because it was too
late," Mannino said.